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Built outside the walls to the north of the town, Santa María de la Cabeza was consecrated in 1210 and is the last example of the Romanesque style in Ávila. Its upper end was begun in Romanesque style and was followed by the construction of the naves in unquestionable Mudejar style. The three apses, which open into three naves, were built in granite on the outside and finished off with a small, plain cornice in Caleno granite.
The three-nave body with double formerets in brick, the arches in the chapels in the apses and the distribution of the south front point to a later date and to the Mudejar tradition. The south front is finished off with a small steeple and a triangular front with a niche containing the statue of the Madonna of La Cabeza. The west entrance was crowned with a solid-built steeple in 1708.
The sculptures that decorate the fascias in the presbytery are characterised by plaits with diamond-shaped tips and reveal the influence of traditional Islamic motifs.
In 1834, the municipal cemetery was moved to this area of the town and the church was used as a chapel. It was later downgraded to a shrine when the cemetery was moved to its current location in the 20th century.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.